Gilbert | Massey
“I was born in Ōtautau in Southland. I’m ah, just turned 64 couple of weeks ago. I’m married to a Papua New Guinea woman, we’ve been together 38 years. We’ve got two girls who are 30 and 23, and one grandson who is nine.
I’ve got the values that come from the Southland upbringing. I’m a Christian, active in my local church. I believe in Jesus and all that means, in terms of looking after people. I want a steady income so I can look after my family and plan for my retirement. It’s important to me that I could and should be able to look after my family. It’s pretty distressing that I can’t, but I’m hoping that it’ll change, always hopeful.
I have an accounting background but I went to Papua New Guinea as a young man, and I finished my accounting qualification there. I was there 30 years, came back just over 10 years now. I haven’t been able to get accounting work for lack of experience, lack of an acceptable qualification, that type of thing. I’m doing whatever work I can. I’m looking at trying to do some sort of self-employment internet-based type business, which is promising, but these things are quite hard to get off the ground. Basically, I’m not planning on retirement.
I’m reasonably fit. I want to keep working as long as I can to get on top of these issues. It’s terrible. I mean, I’ve just looked at my Google report from last month, and it says I travel two hours a day. That’d be about right. It’s very expensive, but it’s where my family want to live, so I wouldn’t be here apart from that.
I’m quite happy with the amount of support I get through my faith and through my church membership and friends and the men and women that are there, so that’s pretty good. In terms of me, it’s so hard when you’ve got not money and no resources, like a car, my own car.
You don’t usually have very much of a connection to your neighbours, so your community is based on, for me personally my church, and then wherever I go I like to talk to the different shop assistants, service station attendants, all that sort of stuff you can have some really interesting conversations. I might be talking to someone today in the library, on the bus, train, wherever it is. Community is just where you meet people. It might be on the beach. It could be anywhere, just walking along the road.
How can you help someone? You can’t get there to do anything, and when you are there, well you can give advice and support and that sort of thing, you know, cuddles or whatever, and be encouraging, but you can’t really dig into your pocket and give out some money. You just haven’t got it. That’s very sad.
I love Christmas. I love Easter. They’re our two biggest festivals as a Christian, as a follower and believer in Jesus Christ, and somebody who wants to live a life that emulates Him as true as I can be to that faith and those beliefs. I would just encourage everybody you know to get involved in the raffle you can’t lose, that is having faith in Jesus Christ as your personal saviour. Don’t worry about the pressures that are out there on Facebook or marketing or whatever it is. It, It’s totally irrelevant, right? Be your own person. In fact if you go to church, read your Bible, pray, listen to the Lord, the Holy Spirit, and surround yourself with people who are like-minded, then those other issues are not real issues at all, and if you’re worried about anxiety or sickness or whatever it is, then we’ve got the hope in our Lord Jesus Christ to help us through those things. He is with us every step of the way. That’s the message I try to get across to my grandson and anyone else who would like to listen to me. So, I’m happy to share those sorts of messages with people at Christmas and Easter, any time of the year really.
I was brought up as a person, as a man, that you don’t make commitments you can’t keep and I sort of crashed after I became married and everything sort of died. So you want to get back on your feet but, but when I get a job, even any job, it just makes you feel so much better. You’ve got some worth when I can actually do something like pay for the petrol or pay a bill, or give my ice-cream to my grandson or something like that. Pay the power bills, whatever it is, that gives me great satisfaction, and it’s very hard to dream when things are pretty tough. But as soon as the situation changes, then bang. You know!
My mind really opens up about possibilities. I mean, this job I’m doing today, who knows, I might be working and going there tomorrow. It could end up being a permanent job. This is, ah hope. This is good. You know? It makes all the difference in the world having the ability to work, to be able to live a living, to be able to hold your head up and do what you think you should be doing, not to be a burden to anybody but to be a contributor. Absolutely.”
